


our untimely conclusion

by ahtohallan_calling



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Modern AU, Seeking a Friend for The End of the World AU, broken up KA finding their way back to each other, some funny stuff too
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:00:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,885
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28434279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ahtohallan_calling/pseuds/ahtohallan_calling
Summary: When the end of the world rolls around a little more suddenly than anyone expected, Anna shows up on her ex-boyfriend's doorstep and asks him to spend the end of their days together-- and he says yes. The world may be ending, but that doesn't mean there's not still time for one last new beginning.
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 35





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> HI hello another modern au from me SHOCKING i know
> 
> this is an au of the wonderful movie seeking a friend for the end of the world, but it's not really going to follow the plot of that movie. i just stole the basic premise of it and am doing what i want with it
> 
> big content warnings here for major character death (them talking about it leading up to it + the assumption that they and everyone else will die), talking about breakups/relationship issues/life trauma (will tag/warn in notes if specific things come up), and sex while a fish may or may not be watching
> 
> huge huge huge thank you to rhianne for the inspiration for the au and helping me plan it out and reading over it. thank you gabi and laura for reading over the first chapter and giving me advice. thank you johanna and molly for giving me suggestions for their bucket list. and thank you, reader, for reading!!!

He knows that knock, but he opens the door anyway, and there she is, just the way he last saw her. A little different this time-- her hair longer, a few more freckles, and then there’s the green-lidded fish tank in her arms. She’s as beautiful as ever; it makes him acutely aware of the ten pounds he put on in the year since he last saw her, and the ketchup stain on his t-shirt, and the stubble darkening his jaw.

She opens her mouth and speaks, and all he hears is, _I guess it is_ , but he knows that’s not what she’s said this time, so he says, “What?”

She sighs. “Sorry. I still talk too fast, I guess. I asked what you’re doing for the end of the world.”

“I didn’t have any plans, really.”

“Oh.”

Her disappointment is palpable, but he can’t let her go, not again, and so he steps back, holds the door for her. “You can come in if you want. The fish can, too,” he adds, kicking himself for saying something so stupid until the barest flash of a grin crosses her face, and that old, familiar thing that feels like flying washes over him.

She puts the fish tank down on a stack of junk mail he’s been meaning to recycle. “Wow. It’s just like I remembered.”

It’s not. He doesn’t keep mugs out on display anymore, and the fridge is bare of pictures, and it’s smelled like shitty Chinese food ever since he spilled a box of chow mein on the carpet and was too drunk to clean it up until the next morning. But he lets it slide; the thought of arguing with her so soon after she’s come back is somehow worse than most of the other thoughts he’s had recently, even the ones about the asteroid and the smithereens it’s going to smash them all to in-- shit, he’s not even sure how many days it is they have left. He stopped counting when they told him he didn’t have to come in to work anymore.

“Do you want something to drink?”

“Sure,” she says, coming into the kitchen and leaning against the counter, arms pulled in tight across her chest.

He opens the fridge and immediately regrets offering. “I, uh, I forgot to refill the Brita, but I got tap water and some cans of Blue Moon. Or there’s some orange juice, but it’s the pulpy kind.”

She hates the pulpy kind. For a moment her eyebrows pull together, like she’s surprised he remembered that, but then her expression smooths back out into neutrality. “Blue Moon is great. Don’t bother pouring it into a glass.”

“Never do.”

“I know,” she quips, and there’s another flash of that familiar smile.

He passes her a can before cracking one of his own, and for a minute or two they just drink, not talking; the only sound is the fizzing of the beer and the faint voice of the newscaster describing the government’s response to the apocalypse, which apparently involves a referendum on asteroid-melting lasers that’s being held up by a measure to increase funding for solar panels on schools.

“Can we turn that off?” she asks suddenly; he picks up the remote and clicks them into silence.

There’s another moment of quiet, and then she draws in a deep breath. “So. I guess you’re wondering why I’m here.”

He nods, worried he’ll fall back into his old habit of saying the wrong thing. Judging by her expression, though, _not_ speaking might have been the wrong thing. She goes on anyway, though. “I was in town pet-sitting for my sister and her wife. You remember them, right?” she asks, not quite casually.

“Yeah. How are they doing?”

“Good. Well, great, actually,” she says, looking down and tapping her nails against her can the way that used to drive him crazy. “They’re in Europe. One-year anniversary trip.”

“I’m sorry,” he says softly; flights have been grounded for the last several days, probably won’t open up ever again. _Ever again_ \-- what a fucking weird phrase to actually use seriously.

“Yeah. So I’m here. And I flew in. So.”

“So.”

She suddenly pushes away from the counter. “You know what, this was stupid. I’m sorry, I’m just gonna--”

“Anna.”

She freezes, her back to him, and he just-- he really, _really_ can’t let her go again. Not now, when the future doesn’t even matter anymore. Doesn’t even _exist_ anymore.

“Anna,” he dares to say again. “No. It’s alright. I didn’t want to be alone either.”

She turns then, her eyes glassy. “Remember our bucket list?”

Of course he does. He still has it in his sock drawer. “Yeah.”

“I guess I thought...maybe we could finally do that. If you want to, I mean. Since we’re stuck with either each other or nobody.”

He thinks he ought to be insulted, but she’s right. Sven’s with his wife and kids; she was with him at his mom’s funeral last spring; there’s nobody at work he even considers tolerable. He always knew he would spend the end of his life alone. He just didn’t expect it to come so soon.

But Anna-- it’s not fair for her to get stuck like this, not when she’s got so many people who love her, her sister and all her friends, probably even some new boyfriend by now. So he’ll do what he can to make the end a little easier on her.

“Okay,” he says, nodding. “Let’s do it.”

* * *

She was half-expecting to see the door opened by a stranger, to hear that no, they had no idea who used to live here or where they might be. And then there he was, looking a little worse for wear, but still that face she loved.

 _Past tense_ , she reminds herself as she waits for him to come back from the bedroom. “I think I have a picture of the list on my phone, hang on,” she’d said, already swiping through her photos, and he’d said, “Do you one better”, and gone back there, and she was trying not to think about what that meant, that he’d kept it. Kristoff, the man of five t-shirts and three nice shirts and six pairs of pants, no more and no less; the man who fastidiously writes expiration dates on everything in the fridge and then ignores them because he can't stand wasting anything; the man who's impossible to shop for on Christmas and birthdays because he hates the thought of having something he is expected to keep whether he really likes it or not-- he's kept the list they had written on a napkin at one A.M. at IHOP.

If she gives in and thinks about it, she’s going to cry again, and she can’t do that, either, can’t bear to wonder if he’ll pull her close and whisper to her until she can catch her breath like he used to, or if he’ll just stand at arms’ length and watch like he did that last time.

“Okay,” he says, making her jump a little. “Here it is.”

He spreads it out on the kitchen table, doing his best to smooth out the creases. Anna smiles a little at the sight of the Tabasco stain on one corner, from where she’d leaned over the table to kiss him and knocked the bottle over.

“Number five,” she says, tapping it, “guess that one’s out.”

“ _Sledding down that big hill at the park_ ,” he reads. “Yeah. Awfully inconvenient, the world ending in October.”

She laughs in spite of herself. “Probably number three then, too. Don’t think there’s a Christmas village we can stay at.”

“What a shame,” he deadpans. 

She sticks out her tongue a moment before she can think better of it and ducks her head to hide her reddening cheeks. “Lucky for you, though. Number four?”

“Overnight hiking? You really think that’s a good idea after last time we tried camping?”

Her finger slides down to the bubbly A written beneath the four. _Learn to navigate based on the sky_.

“Okay. We’ll do that one, then. And that was one of mine, so to balance it--” He considers for a moment before pointing at number seven. “The fancy restaurant and nice clothes. If there’s still one open.”

_“I’ve always wanted to go to one of those places that say ‘Jacket required’ on the menu,” she said dreamily. “Can we put that on there?”_

_He wrinkled his nose. “Can we just take the free bread and leave?”_

_“Kristoff!”_

“Anna?”

“Sorry,” she says automatically.

His forehead furrows; for a minute he thinks he’ll tell her what he always used to, _you don’t have to apologize for everything_ , but instead he says, “Okay. So we’ll do that. And then the big ones--”

“Number one and two?”

“Yup.”

He drains his can of beer as if he needs the fortification before he goes on. “I don’t think we’ll have time to go to both oceans,” he says, his voice as neutral as if he’s just telling her it’s going to rain again tomorrow.

“Okay. Well-- since the Grand Canyon is in that direction-- Pacific Ocean it is, then.”

“Sounds good.”

They fall into an awkward silence, one that feels all too familiar here in this place, with this _person_ , that she used to have memorized, used to know blind, used to be able to navigate in the pitch black of 3 A.M. when she couldn’t sleep and wandered into the living room to curl up on the sofa and woke with a blanket draped over her and Kristoff there beside her.

“It’s late,” she ventures to say at last, waiting for him to set the tone for what comes next.

He nods. “Are you staying?”

She hadn’t expected him to just come right out and say it. She’s grateful for it, though, to skip the awkward dance of hidden meanings. “If that’s okay, yeah.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

“Down in my rental car, yeah.” She looks down at her hands, fiddling with a hangnail, hoping he won’t ask why she brought her suitcase with her, why she was counting so heavily on him letting her back in.

He doesn’t let her down this time. “Okay. Go grab it, and I’ll put some clean sheets on the bed for you.”

“No, it’s fine, I can--”

“I usually sleep on the sofa, anyway,” he says bluntly. “Fall asleep watching TV.”

“Oh,” she says, her voice small. “Well. Okay. If you’re sure?”

He nods.

“Okay,” she says again. “I’ll just-- I’ll just be right back.”

“Okay,” he echoes, and turns back to the fridge to grab another beer.

Memories of the end filter through her mind as she heads down the cement stairs, how the last few times she was here she left swiping at her eyes and swearing under her breath, the things they said to each other and no longer pretended they didn’t mean. She’s not sure whether she wants to laugh or cry at the memory of one of the worst of them.

_“What is it you’re looking for, Anna?” he said, throwing his arms up in frustration._

_“What everyone else wants! A_ home _. A family. Someone to spend the rest of my life with! And I thought maybe that could be you.”_

_“Well,” he said, something behind his eyes shuttering, “Maybe you were wrong.”_

“I wasn’t wrong, Kris,” she whispers to herself, down in the parking lot where there’s no chance of him hearing. “Funny how things work out, huh?”

  
  
  
  
  



	2. three years and eleven months or so before the second end

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi so basically i'm going to do alternating chapters of present day and the past, ill do past tense for chapters that happened in the past in case you're not paying attention to chapter number
> 
> but if you like having a clear timeline then peep the chapter title and hope that i did my math right
> 
> thanks rhianne and gabi for helping lots with this

There are times in a person’s life when they can sense the importance of what’s about to happen, the same way you can step outside on your porch in mid-December and taste the cold in the air and feel the strange new bitterness in the wind and know that tomorrow you’ll wake up to the season’s first real snow.

This moment was nothing like that-- well, apart from it being mid-December.

“Here’s the bar,” the manager, Lindsay, said, cracking her gum again. “That’s Sven.”

“Howdy,” said a tall man with a smile that shone bright against his dark skin. “Welcome to the crew.”

“That’s Kristoff.”

The blond man wiping down the counter only glanced up for a moment. “Hi.”

“Don’t be offended,” Lindsay said. “He doesn’t smile at anyone. Not even customers.”

“Fuck off,” he said, still not sounding particularly invested in the conversation.

“That sounds like a challenge to me,” the woman behind her said. 

That, finally, got both men to look at her, even Kristoff looking a little curious at the sight of this red-haired woman wearing a black uniform shirt a size too big who sounded way too happy about being in a midwestern Applebee’s at three o’clock in the afternoon.

“I’m Anna,” she said, giving a little wave. “Nice to meet you guys.”

“You, too,” Sven said as Kristoff nodded beside him. “See you around.”

And Anna followed Lindsay towards the kitchen, and Kristoff resumed cleaning while Sven went back to slicing limes, and neither of them had any idea that they had just met the person they would someday choose to die beside.

* * *

Most people didn’t stick around here more than a few months, so by the end of her first shift, Kristoff had already forgotten the new girl’s name. But when she laid eyes on him on her way out the door, she smiled and fluttered her fingers in a wave. “Night, Kristoff.”

“Night,” he muttered, wishing Sven hadn’t gone home an hour earlier; he, at least, would have remembered.

Before he could feel too satisfied that she’d taken the time to speak to him again, he watched her say goodbye to everyone else on her way out of the restaurant-- although it  _ was _ sort of nice to see that no one else had bothered to make a mental note of her name, either.

The next afternoon she was back, still with that bright smile. “Hey, Kristoff! Hey, Sven!” she said as she bounced towards them.

He only nodded, but Sven returned her grin. “Hey, Anna. First day go okay?”

_ Anna _ , Kristoff thought, making a mental note--  _ just to be polite _ , he told himself,  _ might need her to help you clean up some night. _

“Yup! God, this place is way better than where I was working in undergrad.” She wrinkled her nose. “Kinda like a combination Taco Bell Pizza Hut, but a local place where they tried to make it fancy. Nachos Alfredo and shit like that.”

Sven, horrified, asked, “What’s even  _ in _ that?”

“You don’t want to know,” she replied ominously before disappearing into the back.

They fell into a pattern before long, their shifts lining up more often than not; she’d come in and greet everyone, but spend a moment talking to Sven, and Kristoff would listen and pretend he wasn’t. He learned she’d grown up here before going to Purdue for college, that she’d come back here because it was cheaper to live with her big sister while she went to grad school, that she liked cats and dogs equally but her sister was allergic to both.

But the illusion of his indifference was broken the night she came in, her hair still wild from a windy afternoon, and immediately hurried over to tell Sven how she’d watched a professor-- “a real  _ dickhead _ , honestly, so don’t feel bad”-- actually slip and fall on a banana peel crossing campus. By the time she was done, Sven was doubled over laughing, and Anna’s eyes were bright as she leaned over the bar to grin at Kristoff.

“You  _ smiled _ !” she crowed.

“No, I didn’t,” he lied.

“You did, too! And you’re trying not to now. Your eyes are all crinkly in the corners.  _ Ha! _ I told you I could do it.”

Since then, she’d made a point of including them both in her greetings and doing all she could to coax another smile out of him, and he did all he could to pretend he didn’t want to start smiling as soon as she came in the door each night.

But he wasn’t sure that even she could make him smile today-- probably not even Sven, not when both of them still had damp hair from where Sven had run out of gas halfway to work and Kristoff had had to come to his rescue in the middle of a thunderstorm. She seemed to realize that as well when she came in, still pulling off her raincoat as she bounded towards the bar, her cheerful expression melting away like sugar in the rain. “What’s wrong, guys?” she asked, her voice uncharacteristically quiet.

She and Kristoff both looked to Sven for an answer, but he only shrugged and continued methodically dusting every bottle on the shelves. When Anna turned to him for an answer instead, Kristoff cleared his throat before choosing his words carefully. “It’s just...been a slow couple of weeks for us. Lent, I guess. Less people drinking.”

Understanding filled her eyes, and she took a few steps closer to Sven, standing on her tiptoes and reaching over the bar to sympathetically squeeze his arm. “Me and my sister don’t live far from you guys. So if you need a night to just hang out and relax, you and Liz are always welcome for dinner and a drink. Whiskey for you and tea for her-- Elsa doesn’t drink, anyway, so she won’t feel left out.”

Sven laughed for the first time that afternoon. “Thanks, shortstack. I’ll keep that in mind.”

The moment she had slipped into the breakroom to hang up her raincoat, Kristoff turned to his friend, raising his eyebrows. “I didn’t know she even knew about the baby.”

“I’m not you, Kristoff,” the other man deadpanned. “I have other friends.”

“Fuck off,” he said amiably before setting out a napkin for the man who had just pushed through the glass doors and was already making a beeline for the bar. 

“Budweiser,” the man said curtly, even though he didn’t have to; he came every Monday at five, stayed to watch whatever basketball game was on through half-time, drinking one Bud an hour, and not talking to anyone else, no matter how crowded it got around him. He always wore a neatly pressed suit with a blue tie, slicked back his salt-and-pepper hair, and tipped a dollar on each drink. He was, because of all of these wonderfully boring things, far and away Kristoff’s favorite regular customer; he’d take a guy who had a routine over the ones who wanted to talk his ear off or try some new hot pink margarita any day.

“Hi!” came a bright voice-- and  _ that _ was certainly a new addition to the routine; everyone else knew this guy never ordered anything and usually didn’t bother asking. “I’m Anna. I’ll be your server tonight.”

The guy nodded, not looking away from the insurance commercial on TV. “Great.”

“I see you’ve got something to drink. Would you like an appetizer to go with that?”

“No.”

“Okay! I’ll be back by to check on you in a little bit, then.”

No reply this time; the game was already back on. Before Anna could bounce away to check on the couple who had just been seated at a booth next to the bar, Kristoff caught her eye and jerked his head towards the POS system at the far corner of it. 

“What’s up?” she asked brightly as they met, keeping their backs turned to the customers.

“I thought Ash was gonna be on this section tonight again.”

“She was! But we traded.”

His eyebrows furrowed. “But no one wants this section.”

“I wanted it tonight.”

“...you know you have to tip out me and Sven, right? That’s why no one wants it.”

She tilted her chin up, a sudden defiance in her eyes. “Well, that’s why I  _ did _ want it.”

He held up his hands. “Whoa, there, feistypants. I don’t mind you being over here, just making sure you know how it works.”

“I do,” she said with a firm nod of the head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have my job to do.”

She flounced away, and as he rejoined Sven at the bar, the other man raised his eyebrows. “What’s she up to?”

“Fuck if I know,” Kristoff muttered as he slid two napkins to the two men in trucker hats who had just ambled in. 

Anna was back a couple of moments later. “I need two Shark Bowls, please. Top shelf.”

He nearly dropped the bottle opener he was holding. “You need--  _ what _ ?”

“Two Shark Bowls. Top shelf,” she repeated, her eyes sparkling as she over-enunciated the words.

“It’s only five P.M.”

“Uh-huh.”

“On a Monday.”

“Yup.”

“In February. In Kansas.”

She rolled her eyes and sighed as she looked over at the two truckers. “Can you believe this guy?” she said, as amiably as if they were her oldest and dearest friends. “They don’t pay me nearly enough to put up with him.”

The two men chortled as Kristoff rolled his own eyes. “I’m just making sure your table really wants spiked slushies when it’s not even forty degrees out.”

“Of course they do! They come with gummy sharks on top. Who  _ doesn’t _ want that?”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Kristoff said as he turned away to find the lid to the blender.

He couldn’t help but listen as Anna chattered away with the truckers, a smile twitching at the corner of her mouth as he heard her exclaim in delight that she’d always wanted to visit San Francisco and that they’d have to come back by to show her pictures on their way home. By the time Kristoff had turned around to offer her the two Shark Bowls, the men were grinning and showing her pictures of their kids on their phones and had ordered two different appetizers. “Two grown-up slushies, as requested,” he said, and she beamed as she set them on her tray.

“I’ll check back in with you guys in a minute, okay? Those nachos should be out real soon,” she told the men as she turned away with her trademark smile.

The larger of the two men eyed the blue drinks before turning back to Kristoff and asking hopefully, “Can you make those things without any rum?”

Before long, the whole section began to fill up, and he’d made so many Shark Bowls Sven had had to run to the back to find another pack of gummies. And, for once, people at the bar were ordering whole  _ meals _ , not just mozzarella sticks to split, and they were laughing and talking with people they’d never met about the game, and they were remembering to tip, and he’d learned that the man in the suit was named Peter and that this was the one night a week his wife insisted he take some time for himself while she stayed home with their four kids.

“I gotta say, man, I do appreciate it,” Peter was saying sincerely as he slid his wallet back into his pocket. “The peace and quiet in this place. But it was good to talk to a grown-up tonight, too. So thanks.”

“Anytime,” Kristoff said with a nod. “See you next week?”

Peter grinned before turning to go. “Same time, same place.”

Kristoff glanced down at the receipt the man had left, his eyes widening. “Sven,” he said, not daring to look away in case it disappeared. “Sven, come tell me if there’s a decimal I’m missing or something.”

The other man glanced over, a barely audible  _ fuck _ dropping from his lips. “Am I losing my mind, or does that say a hundred dollars on the tip line?”

“Not just me, then,” Kristoff muttered, glancing up when he heard Anna giggle as she passed by.

“He owns a car dealership,” she said sweetly as she passed empty glasses over to them. “Pays to actually smile at people and ask how their day’s going sometimes, doesn’t it?”

“ _ Jesus _ , Anna,” Sven said, eyes wide. “You wanna work in our section every night?”

She tipped her head back and laughed, her red hair gleaming in the light. “Only if you promise to sneak me some gummy sharks every once in a while.”

“Deal,” both men said in unison.

* * *

It was a rare night in March when there was no game on, no Madness to bring in the regulars she could count on to tip well; just the church crowd after Wednesday night classes who laid out five ones on the table and took one away for each tiny error she made. And it was almost midterms, and she’d been working so much she’d barely had time to study, and she’d forgotten to wash her uniform shirt, so there was still a stain peering out just above her belt where some honey mustard had spilled, and she was going to have to go to CVS on her way home to get tampons, because she  _ and _ her sister had just started their period.

And somehow, she ended up sitting at the bar, and somehow, Kristoff was right there waiting for her with a sympathetic, rare smile. 

“Rough night?” he asked, wiping out a glass.

She groaned, burying her face in her hands. “You have no idea.”

“Trust me, I do. So let me make you a drink to cheer you up. On the house.”

She looked up from her hands, already shaking her head. “God, tempting as it is, I really need to be on my A-game tonight.”

“Don’t you trust me by now?” he teased as he reached for a bottle of grenadine. “You really think I’m gonna get you tipsy while you’re on the clock?”

“Of course I trust you,” she said, so fervently it surprised them both into a surprisingly comfortable silence.

Anna realized as she watched him scoop ice into a small glass and drizzle the bright red syrup over it that just sitting here and watching his capable, steady hands was already doing wonders for the tension that had been gathering in her shoulders. She leaned forward, curious, and saw the corners of Kristoff’s mouth turn up even further as he filled the glass not quite full with Sprite and reached for a jar of maraschino cherries. “Tell me when,” he said, his eyes warm with amusement.

She waited until four cherries floated on the top of the drink before saying “when”, and he nodded, apparently satisfied with her taste in garnishes, before adding an orange slice, sticking in a cocktail straw, and sliding it over to her. “There you go, then,” he said magnanimously. “Special drink I invented for you. It’s called a Ginger Shortstack.”

She stuck out her tongue before taking a long sip of the sugary concoction. “This is definitely just a Shirley Temple.”

“Never heard of that,” he replied, shrugging as he returned to cleaning glasses.

“Oh, as if, you giant goofball. You just wanted an excuse to call me short again.”

“I’m the bartender here, so I’m the expert on drinks, and what I say goes. Besides, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Well. Waters you, I guess.”

She giggled-- fucking  _ giggled _ , like a schoolgirl with a crush-- and leaned forward to take another sip, her eyes tracing the muscles that corded his powerful arms as he scrubbed.

Shit. Maybe she kinda  _ was _ a schoolgirl with a crush.

“This is your fault, by the way,” he said, glancing up from the bowl-sized glass he was rinsing.

“What is?”

“How many big-ass glasses I have to spend forever washing. Thanks to you,  _ everyone’s _ started drinking those shitty Shark Bowls.”

“They’re not shitty!”

“ _ You _ don’t even like them because they’re so sour they give you a headache. Remember that one time?”

She did-- but she was more than a little surprised that he did, too. “Well,” she said, hoping he didn’t notice the flush rising in her cheeks, “those shitty Shark Bowls paid for my gas last month.”

He laughed at that. “And it paid for Sven to get a second copy of their ultrasound photo. Did you know they make you  _ pay _ for that shit?”

“A  _ second _ copy? I haven’t even seen it yet!”

Kristoff grinned and unclipped a piece of paper from where it hung just beneath the POS system. “Here you go. My godson,” he said, so proud that Anna felt something warm in her chest.

“He looks like Sven,” she said happily, tracing the line of a tiny nose.

“How the hell can you tell? Just looks like squiggles to me.”

“Woman’s intuition,” she replied, tapping her temple before slurping down the last of her drink. “Anyway, I’m not even working a full shift tonight, so my break’s almost over. But thanks for this.”

“Anytime,” he said, and when he turned to replace the ultrasound photo, she slipped a five dollar bill into the tip jar and scurried away before he could tell her he wouldn’t take a dime from her.

And when that night she slipped into her jacket and reached for her keys in the pocket, she found it again, she pulled it out to see he’d left a note on it, scribbled in pencil.

_ Nice try, shortstack _ .

She smiled all the way home.


End file.
